Can You Motivate Salespeople?

The noted football coach, Lou Holtz, once said:

“Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated.”

Since I’ve never had the opportunity to speak to Mr. Holtz, I can only surmise that what he was alluding to was not a lack of patience on his part towards unmotivated people, but a declarative statement that since we cannot motivate anyone to do what they are not motivated to do, cutting them is the only solution.

We tend to be less Holtz-like when it comes to managing salespeople.

We embrace our innermost optimist and continue to believe that non-performing salespeople will eventually improve.

We celebrate their good qualities; like being easy to manage, easy to get along with, solid team-players and good soldiers - both with your team and your customers.

The most obvious manifestation of our optimism tends to show up in two familiar areas; learning and compensation.

We have an almost primordial need to believe that we can train people to be successful, so we send them to conferences and trade events, and we hire experts in our field to coach them to be better salespeople.

We introduce competitions and bonus/commission initiatives designed to motivate them to sell more - and we are then left to wonder why the same people win those competitions every time, while the less successful salespeople continue to under-perform.

Katherine Graham-Leviss, wrote in The Perfect Hire “People are motivated to do what they want to do, not what you want them to do. So, a lot of time gets wasted trying to manage your salespeople by attempting to motivate them, something that is quite impossible to do.”

Salespeople are either motivated to sell or they are not. Great salespeople wake up every day (including days they are not working) thinking about how they can move the bar.

They don’t need a motivation call from you, me, or Lou Holtz. They are wired to inspire and influence customer behavior and the scorecard they really care about is sales results. ?

When hiring salespeople, there are many qualities that we would like to have in our best candidates, but which we might be willing to compromise.

Self-motivation should not be one of those compromises. If it is not inherent, it won’t materialize… no matter how much money or training you throw at it.?

Peter Smith is a consultant, speaker, and sales trainer. He is the author of three books, Hiring Squirrels, Sell Something, and The Sales Minute (Available in print and kindle on Amazon). He is also a columnist for National Jeweler and The Jewelry Book, where he writes about the retail experience. For booking: [email protected]